midi controller

hi, i think a sort of midi controller / instrument with a linux distribution + pure data inside. PureData should start automatically on boot and load a patch.The problem is how to interface with buttons and knobs?

ok but my idea is to make a stand alone box with Rasp+knobs, i'm in the computer music from 1999and already have a lot of instruments and midi interface. I have already built electronics for music and will want to experiment with something new.

First thing, this Linux will probably not have an ASIO driver yet (or something similar).If it does, the latency of this device will be significantly higher than from a PC, why?, because the CPU has very little, to no L-cache! Also the cpu is pretty slow.Good enough to run a single instrument through, but once you start to have polyphonic, multi layer instruments, that have a variety of analog control settings; like attack and sustain variables depending on how hard you hit a key and keep it pressed in, this CPU might not handle the stress.

Even then it would be advisable, to find a flash drive (non SD) that has high iops, and connect it via a bus other than USB. USB will increase latency considerably too!

But it is possible. If you want best results, you'd probably have to plug in a fast USB stick into the USB port, without HUB, as sample drive, and connect your USB midi device to the other port (or connect a HUB inbetween so you can add a mouse and keyboard, and other low bandwidth devices).

I think the biggest issue is finding software that will run on the raspberry's os, and preferably software that is optimized for the pi. Also software that has a 'learn' mode for midi knobs, and a midi controller that will be recognized out of the box!Some of the more advanced midi tools over USB need drivers. You don't want to run wine on the raspberry (doesn't work I heard, and even if it does, would be too slow).

Just to butt in the thread - if you're looking for a cheap control surface, the nanoKontrol ain't too shabby. Example link (I have two of the ones in the picture due to a delivery snafu): http://www.amazon.com/Korg-nan.....B001J8LJWK

Overall quite useful to control me some RGB LEDs with an Arduino. But now I have to wait for the raspi for something silent to serve as a bridge between the control surface and the bit-jiggler, cause I'm too lazy to fiddle with midibox os on the lpcexpresso...

There is an interesting kickstarter project called Makey Makey that enables you to create a computer keyboard out of anything that conducts electricity (I think), for example, you want to make a keyboard out of bananas, you hook the banana up with a clip to this board, and there you go. So theoretically if you wanted to send basic midi notes you could send it through the keyboard (need a special app that takes keyboard input and routs to MIDI though). I'm trying to make a keytar so I was looking into solutions. I would like to have touch sensitivity though.